SHANNON NOBIS isn't hard to find these days. She's the one recommending the salad bar at the River Horse to the out-of-town racers and giving directions to Jan's; the one who got to spend Thanksgiving at home. The one who, at 22, says she's already learned a lot about life and skiing and the difference between cruise control and overdrive.
Nobis, who spent her formative skiing years living in Park City, is a member of the U.S. Ski Team competing this weekend at America's Opening. And for the first time in her professional career, she is competing in a World Cup event in front of her hometown fans - something she wasn't certain she would ever get the chance to do."I love it here," she says. "It's my favorite place."
That Nobis would be back in Utah with the world's best skiers wasn't always a strong possibility. In fact, for a time it was a remote possibility. A spill on Valentine's Day 1990, the day after qualifying for the Junior World Championships, turned her knee into something resembling wet pasta. "That," says Nobis, "was a bummer."
The injury was only part of her fade from grace, though. There was the pink slip she received, compliments of the U.S. Ski Team. And there was a brief period afterward when she began wondering whether her future involvement in skiing would be limited to tending gates.
"I was making myself believe I was finished - and I wasn't," she says.
Oddly enough, the injury that nearly ended her career eventually helped her develop into a born-again member of the Ski Team. Without the injury, she says, she "would have been getting by just on talent, and talent isn't enough."
Despite her conspicuous ability, there was some doubt as to whether Nobis would be able to come back from the injury. Teammates didn't call her the "Sunday Cruiser" for nothing. The nickname referred to her penchant for gliding by on talent alone and showing up for Sunday's races without much preparation.
"That's what they thought every time they saw me ski," she says. "My technique was bad."
It wasn't that Nobis didn't have top-level ability. It was that she didn't have a matching attitude. Her success as a junior racer came so rapidly and easily, she didn't adjust well once she got into a higher level of competition. "I always had a feel for the snow. I had good touch and I didn't have to work that hard," she explains.
Upon recovering from her injury, Nobis turned in disappointing results. So disappointing that she was shuttled from the U.S. Ski Team. Suddenly, the Sunday Cruiser was in neutral. "That was a very rude awakening," she says.
Nobis spent 11/2 months during the 1992-93 season thinking of quitting altogether. Smarting from the snub, she returned to her former coach at Green Mountain Valley Ski Academy in Vermont, Kirk Dwyer. He told her to get a life - which in her case amounted to skiing - and talked her back onto the slopes. He also advised her to get used to winning again.
Fortified by her coach's enthusiasm, she returned to competition. But this time it was was under humble circumstances. She paid her own way to Ski Team training camps and entered races that weren't always prestigious. But they did produce one thing: confidence.
"Once I started winning again, that was good. That was OK with me. I learned that if you're not doing well in the big races, well, you have to go back and get winning again to get your confidence going," she says. "It was a domino effect."
A rejuvenated Nobis suddenly began living up to expectations as never before, having determined that not even raw talent is a substitute for hard work. The results were impressive. She won four medals at the '93 World University Games and claimed the Nor Am giant slalom title. This year she finished 10th in the Super G in the Olympics in Norway, then captured her first national title in the Super G at Winter Park in March. "Winning the nationals was the best feeling ever," she says.
So now Nobis is back. Not only back on the Ski Team, but back in Park City, where she once dominated as a junior. Her return was spoiled Saturday when she was was disqualified after hooking the tip of her ski and falling in the giant slalom.
Nevertheless, the setback will probably prove to be temporary. Having been on and off and back on again with the Ski Team, Nobis is wiser than before, having learned there's more to top level skiing than simply cruising. She's tried moping around and thinking about quitting and found that didn't work so well, either.
"Being kicked off the team, I had to learn everything over," she says. "I had to learn being a good skier is a long-term thing. I used to worry about what people said and how I looked, and then when I got kicked off the team, I thought, 'I don't care, I just need to win.' "
And there's no better place to work on winning than back home, where she can not only celebrate her return to prominence with family and friends, but also tell all those visitors where to get the best pizza in town.